The Cycle Room or: The Later Is the Earlier by Eva Meyer-Hermann, accompanying text solo show "The Cycle Room" by Jonny Star, 2017. Translated from the German by Drew Hammond in collaboration with the author [English]

Some Things Take Time to Come into the World. The Development of the Artistic Work of Jonny Star by Tina Sauerländer in Jonny Star: See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me: Distanz Verlag, 2016, pp. 112–119. Translated from the German by Jonathan Blower [English]

Jonny Star takes us into the boudoir, a public space that seems to be private. And just who is that person, actually: Star – Jonny Star? A female artist who's adopted a male artist's persona, mocking the figure of the masculine genius with such impudent disrespect? Star trivializes images of pornography by using techniques of domestic handicrafts, embroidering little flowers and gluing pearl jewelry on top of the images.Star also creates bronze figures, the movements of which seem to be stuck in a fatal moment. Their figuration would dissolve into the duktus, were it not for the trappings of Romanticism, were it not for the animals. The small, delicate, and yet explicit companions seem sentimental, but in fact they offer support and hope.Jonny Star distances herself from the art market through an immense privacy. Far removed from the art made for the stock market, which passes out millions of hand-gilded coffee beans in exactly 1645 piles (one for each billionaire), she celebrates the intimacy of biographical expression and invites the viewer to join her in her world. Feelings, joy, and suffering are the key drivers of her artistic expression. For years she presented herself and her circle of artist friends in her own apartment, allowing us to experience creative drive and desire between the oven and the sofa. Her method is artisanal and material, a bricolage of the symbolic and the functional, the ambiguous, the serious and the playful, the found and the created. And now she invites us to enter the boudoir, to stretch ourselves out on big, fluffy lounger cushions, and to immerse ourselves in this vibrant social sculpture – and to revel in the mystery, irony, and playfulness of art.

In a world where not only sex, but also advertising and TV programs are pornographic -­‐ in the sense of the explicit portrayal of a (sexual) subject matter with the purpose of gratifying the senses -­‐ Jonny Star decided to use pornographic imagery and apply it to art, as part of her ongoing investigation of the relationship between art and everyday life. Starting from the recognition that sex means everydayness for pretty much every human being, and that the easy access to pornography nowadays makes it part of a lot people’s daily life too. Sex Sells is a body of work that engages the view with a statement that is also a question: does sex sell? And specifically: does sex help to sell art? What sex in art does for sure is to quickly and deeply drag the audience’s attention, because it is something so personal that has to do with everyone’s identity, which everybody can relate to in a way or another. And attention is a good starting point for sales. The selection of pornographic images for this series is pretty interesting because it expresses a woman’s point of view, a rather unheard voice in the porn world. Indeed, Sex Sells presents mainly gay-­‐lesbian scenes and very little heterosexual pictures as the artist felt that women are presented as mere objects for male pleasure; therefore it doesn’t look like they are enjoying themselves. Jonny could only work with images she felt comfortable with. It appears clear that if women ran the porn industry it would be a lot different! Jonny tried to represent each ethnic group with her choice of porn photos, precisely because sex is such a personal topic and it wouldn’t have been fair to leave someone out. In her pure signature style of using everyday object and transferring them into the art context, Jonny stitches he porn images (very every day, home-­‐made ones) to 60s and 70s -­‐ looking doilies, the middle-­‐class “narrow minded” motifs of her childhood. In this way, she brings porn out of the dark corner and to the light by employing everyday mainstream objects (the doilies) that, in a rather Duchampian operation, lose their original function and become art pieces for the wall. For Jonny Sex Sells represent an almost cathartic process: the frustration from and cynicism towards pornography pushed her to deal with it as part of her artistic research on the everydayness of everyday life. Through the power of art she was able to turn something she reckoned bad into something beautiful, meaningful, creative and fulfilling.

Over the recent past years, the Gabriele-Maria Scheda has created bronze sculptures of beings, half-human and half-animal, that appear to have been born from ancient myths and fairy tales. As in traditional sagas, they convey an age-old collective awareness and communicate personal narratives. These sculptures, in their shape and rough surface texture, generate ambivalent emotions – they stir and repel, appear both vulnerable and brutal at the same time. Plants and flowers are a new thematic addition, but the artist nevertheless remains true to her vision of things. Decoration is not the concern here, but rather conditions. Plants and flowers are personified: lost within themselves or actively addressing the viewer, they express emotions, interactions and attributes. The flower and plant creatures appear to be in a fog, illusive, unconscious, once again as in a fairy tale in which the protagonists tell stories, move about, freeze up, are confused, fall in love, feel lonely and are sometimes all together. Within an exhibition cycle, wall pieces such as photographs, prints or paintings are created that bear strong reference to the sculptures while simultaneously maintaining their independence as works of art. "I photograph my sculptures and utilize prints of the photographs as a substratum for my painting, thus taking the intentions of the sculptures further. Within this continuous interplay, expression is given to a cycle, a spiral, that we humans must pursue within our lives. I use clay and plant residues culled from nature to undertake my exploration. I uncover a form, and truths, that astound me. Through the casting process the form becomes strongly anchored within this world, and this process is also a cycle."